RAMALLAH: U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon Sunday called for an end to Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, saying the illegal building of settlements worked against a two-state solution.

“The Israeli occupation of Arab and Palestinian territories must end. So must violence against civilians,” Ban said in a keynote address at a conference in Beirut on democracy in the Arab world.

“Settlements, new and old, are illegal. They work against the emergence of a viable Palestinian state,” the U.N. secretary-general said.

“A two-state solution is long overdue. The status quo offers only the guarantee of future conflict.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to Ban’s comments by saying ongoing talks between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators were the best way to address the concerns raised by the U.N. chief.

“The only thing I can say at this point is that the most important thing is to keep negotiations going in view of solving all of the issues including those mentioned by the secretary-general,” said the ministry’s spokesman, Yigal Palmor. “The most important thing now is not to jeopardize the talks that are under way.”

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators have so far held three rounds of “exploratory” talks in Jordan to discuss the possibility of resuming negotiations that have been on hold since late September 2010.

But a wide gap continues to separate the two sides in the talks, held under the auspices of Jordan and the peacemaking Quartet, a Palestinian official close to the negotiations told AFP in Ramallah.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has said the Amman talks would not be translated into negotiations without a settlement freeze and clear parameters.

Israel declined to renew a partial settlement freeze that expired in 2010, and the Palestinians say they will not hold talks while the Jewish state continues to build on land they want for their future state.

Israel, meanwhile, has called for direct talks to begin immediately and without preconditions.

Ban’s call came as an Israeli lawmaker said Sunday the number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank at the end of 2011 rose by 4.3 percent compared with the previous year to 342,414. Citing official data obtained from the Interior Ministry, Yaakov Katz of the far-right National Union party said the number of settlers in the West Bank had increased despite a 2010 partial settlement freeze, which he claimed continued to slow Jewish construction in the West Bank in 2011.

Katz said there were now more than 700,000 Israelis living in areas occupied by Israel in 1967.